Naomi’s final entry before the town hall

April 13, 2010

We made it to Sunday night, barely. Avi had nine meals of the stew. I had more trouble with its (lack of) edibility so moved onto a batch of hummus we made from the chickpeas. But we had the same problem as Anand: no tahini so it tasted like cement. And only a few carrots left to dip with.

What we kept finding is that it doesn’t matter how good a cook you are, we didn’t have the ingredients for a single recipe. By Friday I was really struggling to find foods I could eat with all my diet restrictions. I still had tomato sauce and tuna, so could make a pasta sauce — but I didn’t have any pasta because I had to turn down the wheat pasta at The Stop. So on Saturday I broke down and used a bag of my own brown rice pasta. Avi stuck with the stew. So the truth is I fell off before Sunday.

Avi just finished a mini-documentary for Al Jazeera English about the joblessness crisis in the U.S. and the theme of the piece is that, in an economy based on consumption (as opposed to manufacturing), not being able to consume makes you an exile in your own land (see http://tinyurl.com/ycvazgv) One thing I found about trying to stay on the diet is that I really didn’t want to do much of anything out of the house, because I knew I’d get hungry and not be able to eat. So I opted to stay home much more than I usually do.

Yesterday I had a huge plate of green salad and it was kind of glorious. I appreciated it so much. I’m left feeling very grateful to The Stop community for allowing us to have this experience, which was both solitary and collective because we knew others were doing it as well, and we know that we are working towards a clear goal: social assistance levels that allow everyone in Ontario to live in health and dignity.